Community

On October 8th, 2011 the Fitch Aluminum Falcons participated in the 6th annual Groton Family Festival. At their booth the Falcons sold student-made baked goods and conducted robot demonstrations for the families at the event.

Also during the event, members of the team scouted for sponsors and spoke with representatives from several different businesses around Southeastern Connecticut. The Falcons received positive publicity and were a favorite booth among the community.

"It was extraordinarily successful and fun due to the participation of all. Particular thanks are due to Mr. Chidley for robot delivery, all the mentors for coming to troubleshoot the robot, and notable appreciation to our Mascot who spent much of the day in the Aluminum Falcon cooker costume"-Paul Kelleher (USN, Mentor)

Getting new students interested in our team is an important part of our growth. A number of returning students got everything up and running to demonstrate exactly what it is the robotics team does at this year's freshman orientation.

On June 23rd and 24th the team took part in their biggest volunteer effort yet. Working alongside volunteer engineers from Electric Boat and sailors from PCU Mississippi to put together over 400 care packages which were sent out to deployed service members for Independence Day.

This was a two day event. On day one the team packaged up organized and assembled all the toiletry bags included in each care package.

" At first this seemed like a daunting task, but eventually many other volunteers came and helped us out. We each had a “station” that contained a specific set of items, and we’d fill one zip lock bag with the items in that station and pass it on to the next station (that contained another set of items). With everyone’s effort, 400 bags were organized and were ready to be shipped to the troops overseas." - Srini

The second day was spent assembling the care package boxes and filling them with the toiletries assembled the previous day, candy bags, girl scout cookies, and thank you letters. It was nice to see the number of people who turned out to help support the troops. Team 2168 was glad to participate and look forward to being involved in future troop support efforts in the future.